I spoke briefly to

I spoke briefly to one of the children of light at the American Prospect today and this person informs me that, notwithstanding yesterday's post, the Prospect still believes it's right in claiming that money given to the New Democrat Network, an organization Joe Lieberman co-founded with two others six years ago, actually counts as money given directly to Joe Lieberman. Apparently the whole "current leader" bit isn't the point. It's that he was a co-founder of the organization.

As we noted yesterday, this logic would be valid if the NDN were a 'leadership PAC' or a PAC run by or on behalf of Joe Lieberman. (An example of this might be John McCain's Straight Talk America PAC). But neither seems to be the case.

My understanding is that NDN is more like a New Dem version of Emily's List, with money going to striving or sad-sack New Dems in the marginal districts they inhabit around the country. Simon Rosenberg is the President of NDN. So perhaps he could tell us whether NDN functions as the equivalent of Lieberman's leadership PAC.

According to TAP, however, this sort of counting is just standard practice is campaign finance reform circles. I don't think that's true, though. I think this is at best a distortion of the normal practice of tabulating campaign contributions.

Or if it is standard procedure, then perhaps Enron economics is more widespread than I thought.